Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Evaluations

Since it began in 2010, the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) has included evaluations as part of its Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) grant program. The first set of evaluations focused mostly on documenting the work of the TPP grantees and the effects of those programs in their communities. OAH is in its second phase of evaluations. These new projects aim to provide greater detail about how the different pieces of TPP programs work together. This deeper view ideally can help improve how communities approach TPP efforts, bring context to research, and strengthen how new programs are made.

What We Hope to Learn About TPP

The second phase of OAH TPP evaluations builds upon the evidence base set by the evaluations of OAH’s FY2010-14 grantee cohort. In addition to the evaluations conducted by each of the FY 2015-2019 grantees, OAH is conducting five broad research studies:

Meta-Analysis of Federally Funded TPP Programs: This project makes use of data from evaluations already completed by OAH and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Personal Responsibility Program (PREP). Looking across these evaluations will allow the researchers to efficiently see what factors shape the effectiveness of TPP programs.

Evaluation of the TPP Tier 1B Grant Program: This evaluation looks collectively at the efforts of the Tier 1B TPP grantees to scale up TPP programs. It includes a qualitative study to understand experiences of programs trying to reach youth who are most at risk for teen pregnancy.

Making Proud Choices! Evaluation: “Making Proud Choices!” is a popular evidence-based TPP program. The goal of this evaluation is to answer questions about the effectiveness of this widely implemented, but understudied program.

What We Have Learned So Far About TPP Programs

The bulk of OAH’s current TPP research portfolio comes from the evaluations of the individual TPP grantees in the FY 2010-2014 cohort. Overall lessons learned from the evaluations were summarized for both the Tier 1 and Tier 2 grant programs. Additionally, the American Journal of Public Health published a special issue on TPP efforts that featured some of the results. Beyond these grantee-led evaluation efforts, OAH also sponsored three overarching research studies on TPP:

TPP Replication Study: Initiated in 2010, this study examines whether three program models that were commonly chosen by TPP grantees and widely implemented by organizations working to prevent teen pregnancy can achieve impacts with different populations and settings.